Collected Later Poems

by Anthony Hecht

Anthony Hecht, now in his eightieth year, has earned a place alongside such poets as W. H. Auden, Robert Frost, and Elizabeth Bishop. Here under one cover are his three most recent collections– The Transparent Man, Flight Among the Tombs, and The Darkness and the Light . The perfect companion to his Collected Earlier Poems (continuously in print since 1990), this book brings the eloquent sound of Hecht’s music to bear on a wide variety of human from a young woman dying of leukemia to the tangled love affairs of A Midsummer Night’s Dream; from Death as the director of Hollywood films to the unexpected image of Marcel Proust as a figure skater.

He glides with a gaining confidence, inscribes
Tentative passages, thinks again, backtracks,
Comes to a minute point,
Then wheels about in widening sweeps and lobes,
Large Palmer cursives and smooth entrelacs,
Preoccupied, intent

On a subtle, long-drawn style and pliant script
Incised with twin steel blades and qualified
Perfectly to express,
With arms flung wide or gloved hands firmly gripped
Behind his back, attentively, clear-eyed,
A glancing happiness.

Genres: Poetry

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 23, 2003

Reviews

[Eric Byrd]

Hecht writes so well about music! A Bach concerto grosso is "a tumult of muscled currents." Mozart enacts "an architecture of white and gold rosettes." My favorite poem in here is A Love For Four Voices, dedicated as a "homage to Franz Joseph Haydn." It feels like the libretto for the chamber opera that Haydn might have made out of A Midsummer Night's Dream. Completely delightful.

[Patricia N. McLaughlin]

This collection is full of masterfully crafted meditations on the riddles of life in Hecht’s elegantly colloquial style.

Favorite Poems:
“Riddles”
“Crows in Winter”
“Death Sauntering About”
“Death the Hypocrite”
“Death Demure”
“Death Riding into Town”
“Death the Inquisitor”
“Death the Oxford Don”
“Death as a Member of the Harlem Guild of St. Luke”
“Death the Knight”
“Death the Archbishop”
“Death the Society Lady”
“Death the Poet”
“Death the Painter”
“Death the Judge”
“Death the Mexican Revolutionary”
“Death the Punchinello”
“Death the Whore”
“Death the Film Director”
“Death the Copperplate Printer”
“Death the Scholar”
“Death the Carnival Barker”

[John]

PPE 4/23/08

[!Tæmbuŝu]

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